Sone thoughts on the debate.
1. No science is ever settled. People who study climate and weather patterns produce models which seek to predict future temperatures. These can always be queried and improved as new data is collected and as researchers improve their understanding. There would be no point in hiring so many researchers and spending so much on this topic if we already have all the answers and perfect forecasts.
2. Geologists and earth historians have produced compelling evidence of plenty of climate change in earth history. Before any people were on the planet there were periods when the climate was much warmer than today, and much colder. Climate change continued with people on the planet before they burned a single lump of coal or any oil and gas. This means there are obviously drivers of climate change from natural causes that climate scientists should include in their models and seek to forecast.The idea that climate change is just driven by man made C0 2 is not good science.
3. CO 2 is a greenhouse gas. As China and India generate much more of it and are increasing their output so that will add to warming, before adding in other climate changing phenomena. The U.K. contributing under 1% and falling is not making much difference to a growing world total. Those concerned about the role of man made CO 2 should concentrate on changing the behaviours of the big and growing contributors. The five largest producers are China, USA, India, EU and Russia.
4. To give us accurate forecasts of future temperatures model makers need to include volcanic activity, changes in water vapour and cloud concentrations, sun intensity and solar flares, shifts in currents and wind patterns and other crucial variables affecting weather and climate.
5. The temperature in 1990 or just before large scale industrialisation was not necessarily optimum. Some places suffer too much from the cold at 1990 temperatures, just as more could suffer from too much heat if there is too much warming. More CO 2 is good for plant growth. Earth history implies it is difficult to create climate stability given the strength of some natural forces that shift from ice age to warm period and back.
6 Adaptation to changing climate is an important option. Where there might be drought there needs to be more water storage and irrigation. Where there might be flood there needs to be better pipes, conduits and river containment to take extra volumes.
October 9, 2024
I agree with all 6 points in the blog.
October 9, 2024
So do I , I can’t imagine any sentient person contesting anything. It’s almost baffling that JR had to write this down.
This is one of those things that we all knew until yesterday, rather like some biological facts.
October 9, 2024
Yes, an ‘astute grasp of the obvious’, as some wit once said. The problem we face though is not addressed; that of vested interests seeking to take advantage of the imprecision of ‘the science’. The questions un-asked, the unwillingness to evaluate challenges to what we think we know, and dogmatic political views. First, is it really CO2 that is the CAUSE of global warming, and second, is it better to ADAPT to the temperature changes rather then change our entire economic model. Answering these questions would be money well spent.
October 9, 2024
Lynn – that is exactly the problem, the mass of people out there do NOT know, hear about the factors, and generally can not be bothered to contest the ‘green lobby’.
October 9, 2024
That famous line uttered by a deluded,mentally disintegrating Blanche du Bois (in Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire)comes to mind:
“I don’t want realism.I want magic!”
October 9, 2024
Ha Ha!
That reminded me of ‘Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn’ – from Gone with the Wind.
For most people thats what they might say.
October 9, 2024
That’s the problem, MT. There are gatekeepers stopping things from appearing in the public domain. And more of them than we might have thought.
October 9, 2024
Agree with you both. Six sensible, uncontroversial facts from Sir J. So why do our political masses keep heading at top speed for the net zero solution which will be a disaster?
The UK government should focus on resource management, population control/reduction and be set up to cope with hotter or colder weather.
October 9, 2024
Me too. They do not even have all the input data they need to predict the climate in 100 years, Their models do not even predict the past! The cannot predict the climate for next January let alone 100 years time. Anyway a bit warmer and a bit more CO2 would be a net good. What are their predictions for wars and populations for 100 years, they say it is mane made climate change so clearly they must know this top.
Important letter to PM and Dr John Cambell video.
Mr. Russell Broadbent, MP https://russellbroadbent.com.au Letter to Anthony Albanese, Australian Prime Minister.
Has the foolish(?) Sunak corrected his “unequivocally safe” statement to the house yet?
October 9, 2024
You say “Adaptation to changing climate is an important option” indeed perhaps the only sensible option. Anyone who thinks the best way to stop forest fires in say Greece or flooding in Cumbria is to reduce CO2 is bonkers. It is not some world thermostat just one of millions of factors.
October 9, 2024
Adaptation is far cheaper and far quicker than pushing “net zero” at a cost of £billions and waiting 100 years to see if this works to reduce forest fires or flooding (it won’t). See what the whether does be it hotter, colder, wetter, windier and adapt as needed to what comes any other approach is insanity. Plus the things they push to reduce CO2 like “renewables”, walking, EV cars… do not much anyway. Not that reducing CO2 is even a good thing.
October 9, 2024
So the bland and not to bright James Cleverly comes top – what dire fake Tory MPs we must have. I assume another stitch against the members is planned to deprive them of their favourite Kemi. I am not fan of any of them all the potential leader have moronically fallen for net zero. Robert Jenrick now says the right things (and is now finally for leaving the ECHR) but how can we trust him given his history? Another Chameleon Cameron type?
I certainly do not want Cleverly in the last two – though he is better than Heath, May, Sunak, Blair, Brown or Major is the best one can say of him but almost anyone would be better than them. Then again is it better for the Con-socialists to have a dire leader and for the sensible Tories to leave. If Kemi is stitched up perhaps she and her supporters should join UKIP and ditch their potty net zero belief as they do so.
October 9, 2024
we LL your wish comes true ! Mr Cleverly is out of the running- his story did not ring true.
October 9, 2024
Well that is encouraging perhaps the 121 Con-Socialist MP they are not all completely mad. But there clearly was an attempt to stich up Kemi but perhaps they could not count very well.
Alas even the last two are pro the total insanity of Net Zero.
October 9, 2024
Well it seems not.
Have we seen the Machiavellian hand of Mr Gove here I wonder?
October 9, 2024
Mmmn… just watched him ‘being’ Editor at the Spectator, so maybe he has an alibi…. 🙁
(but then again, he also has a phone…)
October 9, 2024
You got your wish, Cleverly lost 2 votes from before and possibly none of Tugenhat’s went to him!
A day is a long time in politics.
October 9, 2024
Well, who would want their future career determined by a bunch of Tory MPs?
October 9, 2024
Climate science is akin to Astrology or Economics. It is a guessing game.
Scientists are unable to predict accurately the weather in 3 months time let alone 50 years.
Most people of sound mind accepts the climate changes and the same people are beginning to see through the UN/WEF CO2 scam.
Net Zero is nothing more than a Marxist hoax designed to bankrupt us, that’s why only a handful of countries take it seriously.
October 9, 2024
Come on now!
We all know 100% that the orbit of the sun around the earth is speeding up and that the kinetic energy so produced is heating up our planet to near boiling!
Follow the science.
Polar bears drowning
Holes in the ozone layer frazzling us.
Acid rain…
My father was a climatologist.
And gosh its all only been reported in newspapers for about 110 years!
October 9, 2024
nonsense! It is all a Marxist scam
October 9, 2024
Are you being serious?
lol 😂
Did you actually READ what I put?
Really!!
October 9, 2024
Unfortunately, we are one of them!
October 9, 2024
Sensible economic predictions by sensible economist are far better than the climate ones. But there are loads of bonkers lefty economists, just as there are bonkers net zero zealots.
October 9, 2024
“Scientists are unable to predict accurately the weather in 3 months time let alone 50 years.”
and one of the factors that affect the average temperature for the three month after that is the climate in those first three 3 months and so on? So QED they thus cannot predict the climate. Plus the clearly cannot predict all the many things listed above like volcanoes anyway..
Moves to restrict young drivers taking passengers backed by the AA it seems. Not such a good plan as then they will travel by other means bikes, parents taking them etc. So on balance this means more trips and thus increases crashing risks. Bikes and walking hugely more dangerous circa 10X anyway. So one going by car alone and the other by bike increase the risk by about 11X increases CO2 too. Do we have complete idiots in charge? They really just want to drive everyone off the roads by EV high costs, road blocking or just bans.
October 9, 2024
Isn’t it hilarious that the next COP(29) is AGAIN being held in a country-Azerbaijan this time-that is totally dependent on revenues from fossil fuel exports!
October 9, 2024
Every major news outlet now calling out the Florida hurricane as a result of climate change, without any debate or counter argument, maybe its just a large hurricane ….the brainwashing is complete
October 10, 2024
I suspect this may be because of the report by the GWPF (available on their website) which found that hurricanes had not increased in number or severity in recent years. The PTB probably wish to drown that out with hysteria.
October 9, 2024
A con! you got it right 😁
October 9, 2024
Agreed. For centuries we have managed without climate change science. We just lived by the season and planned ahead when possible.
Technology if anything has made us stupider.
October 9, 2024
I suggest the addition of
7 The IPCC’s focus on man made causes of and influences on the rise in global temperature and it’s exclusion of consideration of natural causes and influences means its forecasts are unreliable. The IPCC has failed to identify how man made contributions to temperature change can be distinguished from natural causes. Expenditures based on unreliable forecasts are wasted expenditures. The historic practice of adaptation is the practical alternative.
October 9, 2024
…filled with enthusiastic boffins getting well paid for investigating their hobby.
October 9, 2024
And in turn: –
8. There is accordingly no logical or reasonable basis for politicians of any colour to enact measures that will destroy or severely harm quality of life as we know it without any corresponding net benefit.
October 9, 2024
well said, Life will continue by ADAPTION not revolution as we do not know the direction of science and we will continue on the ingenuity of man!
October 10, 2024
The IPCC reports are often nuanced, whereas their SPMs (‘summaries for policy makers’) are not.
They themselves say
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
IPCC Working Group I: The Scientific Basis, Third Assessment Report (TAR), Chapter 14 (final para., 14.2.2.2), p774.’
Yet politicians and lobby groups proceed as if that is not the case.
October 9, 2024
Sir John,
You mention volcanic activity. Not many people seem to have heard of the underwater Hunga Tonga explosion which injected 150 million tons of water vapour into the atmosphere in December 2021/January 2022.
For more information, readers of your Diary might like the explanation by John Leake of ‘Courageous Discourse’.
October 9, 2024
Mary M
True, and another salient point is that the majority of vocanos beneath the oceans are not even mapped!
October 9, 2024
The number of oil storage depot fires in the Ukraine /Russia war in the past 3 years has release more co2 into the atmosphere than all of the vehicles in the UK in the past 100 years …we need to put things into perspective
October 9, 2024
true !
October 9, 2024
Amend ‘all vehicles’ to ‘cars’
In 2020 all UK transport co2 emissions were 99 MtCO2e million tonnes of carbon dioxide
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-and-environment-statistics-2022/transport-and-environment-statistics-2022
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has directly caused or paved the way to the emission of 175 MtCO2e million tonnes of carbon dioxide – not including the massive oil storage fires across Russia August – September
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/study-details-huge-emissions-resulting-russias-invasion-ukraine-2024-06-12/
October 10, 2024
I somewhat doubt that claim.. 1 year perhaps. But I don’t think there is that much storage.
October 9, 2024
Take care. The Climate Inquisition will be after you for making such obviously sensible comments.
October 9, 2024
+1
October 9, 2024
Yes Sir John, you will be banned from the BBC as a climate Heretic (as was Nigel Lawson)
It is after all “Settled Science” 🙂
October 9, 2024
(Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and section 66 of the Sentencing Act 2020)
“Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s ~religion or perceived religion~.”
https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/hate-crime
Make no mistake, climate change is a religion
October 9, 2024
PM :
Yes, there is every chance that Sir John’s post could lead to an accusation by XR/JSO that a non-crime hate incident had occurred as they see anything countering the immediate implementation of Net Zero as humanicide.
October 9, 2024
The climate change lobby are very able to prove whether their models are correct or not and thus whether their forecasts are accurate or not.
In the Investment Management sector we use a large number of models which we can test at any time to evidence whether they are correct or not. The best way to do this is to take a time series (ie historical data for each of the variables used in the model) and test what the model’s forecast is for subsequent dates which have already occurred (ie out-of-sample forecasting). Eg lets say we have a model based on a 2000 to 2010 time series. We can use the model to forecast for 2011, 2012, 2013 and so on). We can then compare the model’s predicted outcomes with what actually occurred in those years. If the predictions are correct then the model is likely correct (there is various extra testing on top of this too though to be extra-certain of the model’s accuracy). If the predictions are wrong however you know you have a deficient model and it needs further work until the out-of-sample predictions are correct.
I am not aware of the climate body demonstrating a model which satisfies this testing. If this is the case they should be sharing the weaknesses and deficiencies of the models which they are using otherwise they will be at risk of misrepresenting future outcomes (which is a lot worse than being honest and open about a deficient model). The climate lobby can do this today and I think the media should be asking them every time about their out-of-sample forecasting testing results whenever the climate body make a prediction.
That way we will know if their models have relevance (ie predictive power) in the real world or not.
October 9, 2024
Could it be the reason why since the mid-1990s the people in charge of climate models are running PMIP (Palaeoclimate Model Intercomparison Project) and publish their results in the various scientific journals (Quarterly Journal of the RMS, J.of Atmospheric Sciences, J.of Geophysical Research, …)?
You might not be aware but this type of work has been going on for about thirty years and most climate models used within the IPCC reports are also part of PMIP.
October 10, 2024
But the politicians and media influencers, if they read it at all, don’t read the full IPCC report, Hefner, only the summary. That simplifies the message and irons out any inconvenient aspects that we the wider public aren’t supposed to worry our heads with.
October 11, 2024
Then I would like to ask you for it. Please could you provide the model and its out-of-sample forecasting results which justifies the hypothesis that global temperatures would be limited to 1.5 °C if global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are netted to zero by 2050.
If you can provide sufficient out-of-sample forecasts (and the model of course satisfies the multiple regression assumptions as well as adjusted R-squared, AIC and BIC too for its reliability) then the argument is settled. However, if you can’t provide this then you know as well as I do the model is flawed and the climate body are misrepresenting the model’s results.
October 13, 2024
Why does a model based on the physics and dynamics of the atmosphere satisfy multiple regression assumptions that are more likely than not to see dependency of one parameter on a bunch of others without proper explanation of the dynamics/physics behind them?
Where are you going to use your adjusted R-squared, AIC and BIC? At the global scale having reduced the multi-dimensional problem to a, say, only vertically explicit profile? At the regional scale, in which case how do you know that the region you are studying cannot get at times influenced from outside it? At the more local scale, say SE England, where advection is going to be more important?
You might be a specialist of statistics, but beware, statistics before any other thing also have to define their domain of validity w.r.t. the problem they want to study. And I am afraid your approach is not particularly relevant to the problem at hand.
October 13, 2024
You responded to me that there has been out of sample testing since the 1990s. I would like to see that please.
You lobby and claim global energy emmissions need to be net zero by 2050 to avert global temperatures going above 1.5 degrees celsius. You could not advance this claim with any credibility without it being modeled and tested.
As originally requested, please could you direct me to the model, the out of sample testing which has been performed and the adjusted r-squared, AIC and BIC. Or does it not exist?
October 13, 2024
I don’t remember having said that ‘there has been out of sample testing since the 1990s’. Most of the models that participate in the IPCC exercises have also been tested as part of of PMIP (Palaeoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project).
One of the latest articles is Climate of the Past, 20/05/2021 ‘The PMIP4 last glacial maximum experiments: Preliminary results and comparisons with PMIP3 simulations’.
For present and future climate simulations ‘How well CMIP3, CMIP5 and CMIP6 future climate projections portrayed the recently observed warming’, D.Carvalho et al., 2022, Scientific Reports, 12, 11983.
I do not know whether your Akaike and Bayesian Information Criterion testing have ever been applied. Given my understanding of how PMIP and CMIP work (all models are welcome in these intercomparisons), I doubt it as it would single out one ‘best’ model, whereas different models might have different strengths and weaknesses, eg, the best stratosphere, or troposphere, or oceanic circulation, or wind patterns, or …
BTW, I am not part of a lobby.
As a last point, if one believe ‘Copernicus: June 2024 marks 12th month of global temperature reaching 1.5C above pre-industrial’, climate.copernicus.eu, 04/07/2024.
October 14, 2024
With respect, this does not provide what I requested / needed. I requested what should be a very easy provision (if it existed): the model, the out-of-sample testing, the multiple-regression testing, adjusted r-squared, AIC and BIC. This is standard model testing criteria and it should be at the climate body’s finger tips (if it existed).
Given your response, I have briefly looked into CMIP and its 6 phases and I can see their models are indeed compromised (hence why they keep getting revised). By their own admission they use ‘simplifications’. Also in the Carvalho article you suggest above it says: ‘…however, given the short future periods here analyzed, inferences about warming at longer timescales cannot be done with confidence, since the models internal variability can play a relevant role on timescales of 20 years and less.’
The unsatisfactory modelling is a serious flaw in the climate body’s claim that global energy emissions need to be net zero by 2050 to prevent the global temperature exceeding 1.5 degrees celsius.
Testing the reliability of climate models is easy to do but alas I have not seen any model-testing results at all yet (which is what I am asking for).
I will email the UNFCC for the model and the testing results I listed above but if it is not available then this would invalidate the claim we need to be net zero by 2050 and we should therefore not be rushing into it.
October 9, 2024
That climate changes is not the subject for debate. The zealotry and denial arise from the debate as to man’s activity having effect on it. Both camps come to extreme fixed positions, much as did the inquisition and flat earthers. They act with the conviction of King Canute.
As you imply in your last paragraph, and having taken advantage of any apparent change by planting a vinyard for instance, it would be wiser to look at the disadvantages and take steps to alleviate the downsides. None of which of course will happen beacause extremism has taken firm root in Parliament and that conduit of left wing unchallenged thinking, the BBC. Sciencs is never fixed, by definition it evolves. Get used to it.
October 9, 2024
Agree – I’d be labelled a denier just because I ask for more evidence ?
October 9, 2024
Thank you Sir John. Right on target with every single point.
When science is settled it is no longer science.
October 9, 2024
Very good Sir John.
But it’s not about the climate ….. as the UN has admitted:
‘Global warming’ is not about the science – UN Admits: ‘Climate change policy is about how we redistribute the world’s wealth’
“Excerpt:
Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC’s fourth summary report released in 2007 candidly expressed the priority. Speaking in 2010, he advised, “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
Or, as U.N. climate chief Christina Figueres pointedly remarked, the true aim of the U.N.’s 2014 Paris climate conference was “to change the [capitalist] economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”
October 9, 2024
And that’s the nub of it, its about control & money
October 9, 2024
The term denier is a Stalinist slander. It has no purpose other than to destroy a person’s reputation, demonise them, remove them and silence their voice. Similar terms in the fascist left’s repertoire of destructive slanders are racist, white supremacist, homophobe, misogynist, bigot, far-right (Hitler was a folk) Socialist not a fascist) and the invented crime that endorsed by John’s party relating to a religion which enjoys asserting its power to destroy speech and debate
The next time someone calls you a denier call them a fascist. Don’t debate with these scum, don’t validate, just play their game and slander them with terms like extremist, fascist and lunatic
The Tory way of trying to reason with people simply plays into the left’s hands although the Tories prefer to appease the left for an easy life which is why the country is a shit hole. Thanks Cameron and Tory party, you’ve destroyed your own home.
October 9, 2024
Spot On
October 9, 2024
well said.
October 9, 2024
But this is the thing Dom, no one denies that there is, has been, and always will be climate change. Quite the opposite infact. What is ‘at question’ is the policy of de-industrialisation of the West whilst the likes of China and India polute more and more and no one is pointing the flaws in the Climate Change logic.
October 9, 2024
Your last paragraph.
Agree 100%
The left has fed on appeasement and reasoning for many years now and grown very stout indeed.
I used to raise your point about “ruining their own homes” with a particular lefty…he always replied that they didn’t care because they would just fly off in their black helicopters.
I still do not understand that reference.
But I wonder exactly how they do think they will escape the mayhem they have created.
October 9, 2024
Yes. It is a shit hole and it didn’t become one within four months of a Labour government.
8 million people have arrived in this country in 18 years. The ones we know about.
The Tories need to get out of the way in seats where they have no hope of winning.
They are no longer the country’s natural government or opposition party.
October 10, 2024
+1
October 9, 2024
There is no debate; the issue is settled. The scientific consensus concerning global heating is overwhelming; 95%. of scientists accept the reality and the cause. The fossil fuel cartel has been funding “scientists” to deny the reality since the 1950’s, after their own scientists made projections which have proved accurate
Big oil sees renewable energy as an existential threat to their business model. They had a large presence at last weeks Conservative party conference.
October 9, 2024
fool!
October 9, 2024
what ‘issue’ is settled?
October 9, 2024
The jobs for the boys at the climate change committee
October 9, 2024
I have learned today that is takes between 4 and 5 tonnes of coal to produce one solar panel. Not as enviromentally friendly as you might think.
October 10, 2024
All made in China
October 9, 2024
There are around 70 different academic climate models. If the science was settled there’d be only one.
October 9, 2024
Ridiculous comment. Do you expect all surgical interventions to remove, say, cancerous tissues to follow exactly the same procedure and use the same medicine after the operation?
October 9, 2024
Ridiculous whataboutery from you hefner.
Try and be a bit more scientific.
October 9, 2024
Factors that are rarely mentioned are global dimming and acid rain.
I read somewhere that China produces more CO2 in a year than the UK has produced since the Industrial Revolution. Given burning coal releases Sulphur Dioxide into the atmosphere, one might expect acid rain to be a serious issue in that part of the world. In the 1970s we were told that the acid rain we were causing by burning coal was destroying forests in Scandinavia. Which, as I remember it, was one of the drivers of the wholesale change from coal fires in our homes to gas boilers.
Is acid rain an issue in China and in surrounding areas affected by the prevailing winds?
Also, the London of my childhood in the 1950s was a dingy place – every building was black from soot in the air. The 1956 Clean Air Act, which made ‘smokeless’ coal mandatory, made a huge difference. Do China, India and the USA use smokeless fuels?
In my lifetime the climate in the UK has changed quite dramatically. The frequent frosts and regular snowfall of my childhood are gone. The seasons have tended to merge. It is generally wetter and milder than it used to be.
I have no view on whether climate change is anthropogenic. I like the idea of clean energy. If solar panels on your roof generated 3kw for 8 hours – as an average – perhaps aided by a small wind turbine in your garden (or on the roof) – that would be 24 kWh. This, stored using storage heaters and highly insulated water tanks, ought to be enough to heat a well insulated house and provide hot water. If your heating was thus provided, the electricity needed to light your home is trivial and could be stored in a couple of car batteries and then used via an inverter.
October 10, 2024
A few issues:- You get nearly all the solar power in summer daytime when least needed. If you store it in batteries the costs of this & the battery depreciation mean costs far exceed using gas heating or gas generated electricity. If you want to heat with electricity do at least use a heat pump to at least get 2 to 3 times the energy you put in as hear out.
“I have no view on whether climate change is anthropogenic.”
Climate change is certainly partly anthropogenic urban heat island, farming changes etc. say 10% manmade.
October 9, 2024
There are no Climate Change Deniers. That is a derogatory description of sceptics or scientists to use the more correct description of people seeking the truth.
Everyone who has studies the variability of weather and its longer term records we now call climate knows climate is constantly changing.
You mentioned some f the variables that affect weather patterns and ultimately climate. Two of the most fundamental you did not mention was solar variability and our planet’s cyclical orbital variations. Those variations studied by Milan Milankovitch who gives his name to what we refer to as Milankovitch cycles, He explained, using mathematics and proxy data from ice cores and other geological markers the mechanisms impacting climate. The truth ultimately boils down to solar energy absorption variations, due to the changing amount of land mass presented to the suns rays during seasonal difference. That seasonal land mass facing the sun alters cyclically over thousands of years.
What is abundantly clear is, CO2 plays no role in climate change other than small fractions of a degree C. That green house warming attributed to CO2 is naturally accommodated by the chemical activity of the biosphere particularly photosynthesising plants which is basically all of them.
The higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere now roughly 420 PPM is good for plants good for humanity and good for the biosphere. We should be celebrating our good harvests and good fortune thanks to increased CO2 levels. We must, stop all the weeping and wailing and stop frightening the children with stories of climate Armageddon.
Keep up the good work, we need to junk Net Zero and fast.
October 9, 2024
In the beginning it was The ozone layer then Global Warming now Climate Change what next don’t go outside unless your covered in factor 1000 sun cream, in the end it’s all a scam by governments around the globe to scare us and screw us for our money nothing more nothing less, the sooner people realise this the politicians will all continue to fleece us of our cash
October 9, 2024
and it is alleged that most sun creams are close to useless.
Australians, by enlarge, are of a whiter skin than most simply because they have been bombarded with the risk of skin cancers and keep out of the sun and cover up. My own observation of 3 trips bears that opinion out.
October 9, 2024
And then they have to be dosed with vitamin D!
Australian Drs obsessed with uncovering a lack of it.
October 9, 2024
Having studied the subject of AGW for almost thirty years I have never seen a peer reviewed paper that shows that CO2 can and will cause dangerous global warming. Can any kind person out there please find me one.
October 9, 2024
Quit your search, there is not one such study to be found. What is available is the pseudo science of the hockey stick variety proving Climate Change is Mann (sic) Made
October 9, 2024
What about one of the original Manabe’s papers for which he got his Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021:
Manabe, S, and R.T. Wetherald, 1967, J.Atmos.Sci., 24, 3, 241-259.
It is based on a one-dimensional (vertical) radiative-convective model with fixed relative humidity (ie, specific humidity varies with temperature) and is available on the web for anybody to look at it.
I hope this information will be acceptable by Sir John.
October 9, 2024
Not exactly relevant and superseded by more recent studies
October 9, 2024
The point was that the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 was already pointed out more than 50 years ago. And you were claiming that there is no peer reviewed paper on the subject.
October 10, 2024
Problem is hefner, whilst CO2 is generally regarded as a factor in the 1.5c rise in average global temperatures since 1850 no on can say with certainty exactly what percentage figure man’s input is responsible.
Do you know?
October 9, 2024
The best videos on this I have seen on this are Prof, William Happer ones – even 2x or 4X levels of atmospheric CO2 will not cause a climate emergency & just a trivial degree of warming (all other things being equal) indeed, on balance, it will be a net good as will the slight warming. We are in a relative dearth of CO2.
October 9, 2024
Indeed. Show me any science that shows CO2 as anything other than a trace gas for plant food, without which we all die.
October 9, 2024
Points very well put.
October 9, 2024
An excellent summary, Sir John. Perhaps it should be more widely disseminated and perhaps be used as the basis for climate teaching in our schools and colleges.
October 9, 2024
I wonder if 1990 in your para 5 should in fact read 1890?
October 9, 2024
I had thought the choice a bit strange.
October 9, 2024
A very sensible analysis.
Sadly not followed by the last Tory government let alone the present shower
October 9, 2024
Nor any of the would be Tory Party leaders
October 9, 2024
ED Miliband and Cris Stark, having admitted that they have clue how to achieve their 2030 plans, have announced a £20 bn investment in carbon capture by methane reformation. This involves splitting this gas into hydrogen, water and CO2 and then compressing it and pumping it into old under sea gas fields. Around 75% more energy and methane will be needed to produce the same amount of electricity. Because they have banned fracking and North Sea exploration this extra gas will have to be imported, having fracked it in the USA or from under sea foreign fields or Middle East countries. A recent US research paper has found that piping, refrigerating, transporting long distances and conversion to final destinations causes much more CO2 that previously estimated. In fact it wont save any. This was double that of pumped gas directly from gas fields, as happened when Siberian gas was not sabotaged.
So Ed and Chris are spending as much as a big nuclear power station like our only one likely to be ready by 2031 on a process which uses more gas and creates more CO2. Perhaps they just want to increase crop yields, for which CO2 is very helpful.
October 9, 2024
…don’t have a clue…
October 9, 2024
Ed read PPE and Stark some sort of half law degree it seems. Lrod Debden (Gummer) read history! Damn fools or are they just on the make?
October 9, 2024
Another truth I believe – EVs with the mining required to extract battery minerals, consumption of coal to produce the steel they are made of, contribution of fossil fuels required to generate recharging energy, tyre wear and brake dust pollution are no environmental solution. If you care about the environment cycle to work.
October 9, 2024
“If you care about the environment cycle to work”
If you live in Wokingham, you may not have too much choice soon. Of course, some of the Lib Dem group that came to our road ‘polling’ on Sunday came by car, as they parked outside. Our new MP (Mr Jones) lives in Early I beleive, so I’m pretty sure he must have driven here too. They didn’t all turn up on bikes, that’s for certain 🙂
October 9, 2024
Us Wokingham constituency residents will need rows of cycle parking with wheel locks available soon – we could take over some car parking space. Only joking.
October 9, 2024
The eventual Lib Dem vision seems to be to turn Wokingham into a cross between Sun City and Portmeirion. Cars will not be allowed inside the town boundary and older residents will drive around in brightly canopied Golf Carts. The Carts will of course be limited to 5mph to stop the stir crazy ‘Oldies’ having drag races past Shute End and upsetting the lycra-clad ‘Wheelies’ (who will be out getting fresh air’ – whilst working from home of course!). It will be a brave new world! 🙂
October 9, 2024
I have tried to discuss with some of the “zealots” whether human activity is the main driver of climate change, or a large contributor or a partial or a minor source. Asking what other factors could be involved just ends the conversation. It’s become a religion where evidence takes second place to emotion. Hurricane Milton is being used to propagandise the religion, I await a reasoned scientific discussion but won’t hold my breath. And my thoughts are with the people of Florida.
October 9, 2024
At last, some common sense (balance) on the subject! Why is this so uncommon?
October 9, 2024
Group think, a desire to keep you jobs and corruption just as we had on the net harm lockdowns and net harm Covid Vaccines!
October 9, 2024
“Adaptation to changing climate is an important option. Where there might be drought there needs to be more water storage and irrigation. Where there might be flood there needs to be better pipes, conduits and river containment to take extra volumes.”
Absolutely!
However, the Green parties in various countries, including ours, have lobbied governments to stop hundreds of years old practices, and have caused disasters!!! Dredging rivers, not done, clearing bush scrub, not done….etc.
Why are they pandered to, one wonders?
October 9, 2024
Turn on your TV and you’ll get a different story. The narrative of ‘climate change’ has infected the whole televisual media.
I’ve had to stop watching Gardeners world, because of Monty Don’s continuous idiotic references to ‘climate change’
I can no longer watch anything with Attenborough in it, for the same reason.
I was watching a Simon Reeve programme a few evenings ago and was bombarded with climate nonsense.
The ability to think for ones self seems to have evaporated both in TV and politics.
October 9, 2024
+1
October 9, 2024
@Old Albion +99
Yes, I’m sick of the propaganda we get regularly from nature programs and everything else – just look at how the soaps try to manipulate our thoughts on how we should behave — The adverts are even worse!
October 9, 2024
+2 Old Albion. I gave up on the BBC for this and its anti-Brexit stance, some 7 years ago. All the while the population are bombarded with this propaganda, the net zero fanatics can keep on damaging our living standards for no good reason.
October 9, 2024
OB
Agreed, I am also getting absolutely sick of it, Country File was also on about benefits and subsidies a few months ago.
Gone are the simple days when Farming was about growing crops, looking after animals, and getting the best price you could from the Market for your product.
October 9, 2024
As a certain German propagandist once said; “If you tell a lie often enough, people will come to believe it is the truth.”
October 9, 2024
Point 1. The entire point of climate change “research” is to demonstrate that the earth is warming and it’s humans’ fault. You won’t get any funding for attempting to show that warming is minimal and it isn’t entirely caused by CO2, even though both these statements are true. Western Governments have painted themselves into a corner on this and cannot now admit they are wrong. Therefore “the science” is settled.
Point 2. Agreed. Furthermore, all change prior to about 1880 was natural. Since then, as if by magic, natural processes are deemed to have stopped and any warming is a consequence of human activity.
Point 3. Are we really reducing our CO2 output or just sending it off shore? As a Marxist, Red Ed Millipede would doubtless like to encourage economic growth in communist China.
Point 4. Very little of which are predictable.
Net Zero is based on a gargantuan lie. It needs someone of note to shout that the Emperor has no clothes.
October 9, 2024
Exactly we need a red team of scientist to avoid corruption and group think. But as we saw under Handcock his henchmen tried to kill open discussion on lockdowns and the net harm vaccines just the same as with climate.
October 9, 2024
WT : “Point 1. The entire point of climate change “research” is to demonstrate that the earth is warming and it’s humans’ fault.”
The IPCC’s remit is to look for anthropogenic reasons for climate change and NOT for any other possible reasons for climate change. There is consequently no funding for any non-anthropogenic reasons and no debate is allowed :
UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications, Melissa Flemming : “We own the science and everyone should know about it”
October 9, 2024
Our host’s #4 merits further comment. The atmosphere and climate are mathematically chaotic and non-linear, meaning that very small changes in input data will lead to very large and unpredictable changes in output data.
Any algorithm trying to represent their future behaviour must capture all the variables that affect them, not just those Sir John mentions, and there may be millions, even billions. Further, the data fed in must be absolutely accurate. Neither of these conditions apply to current computer modelling. It is therefore worthless. Calling it science is an abuse of language.
Even if they did, the chaotic nature of these systems means that prediction would inevitably drift away from reality.
Sir John’s last point is a good one. Humans are bad at predicting but good at coping. It will be far simpler to cope with change than to stop it.
October 9, 2024
You may want to read ‘The primacy of doubt’ by Tim Palmer (2024, Oxford Uni.Press) about how the science of uncertainty can help predict and understand our chaotic world, from quantum physics, to climate change, to pandemics, to financial crashes.
October 9, 2024
I doubt many will want to read….
October 9, 2024
Get with the programme, there isn’t any debate
The whole of parliament are agreed on a pathway of net-zero, the climate change committee has written in law that the climate science is ‘settled’. These views are supported the BBC & Sky , taught in schools and universities, and instructed by the civil service & government funded institutions, now enforced by local government & taxation levies ….watch out if you’re a climate denier
October 9, 2024
The only deniers in all this are those who deny any scope for discussion.
October 9, 2024
Correct
October 9, 2024
The constant media references to ‘climate change’ just about everywhere and on every programme are not acceptable.
As for records, I would like to know where exactly, for example, temperatures are taken today, and in the past, and how, and what exactly was recorded. Is there a direct and exact comparison.
October 9, 2024
Al sensible and logical thoughts and reasons John, so why are no politicians asking these very simple questions time and time again, and thus putting constant pressure on those who promote such damaging policies.
October 9, 2024
” produce models which seek to predict future ” a model is not science, science is something different. A Model is one persons what if prognoses that doesn’t get peer reviewed as they wish to hide what caused them to have that opinion. Science only becomes science if peer reviewed and duplicated in practice.
October 10, 2024
In that case you should be very wary of Wijngaarden and Happer, none of their papers on radiative transfer and climate has been published in the peer reviewed scientific literature.
As for the duplication in practice, it is done every day in weather forecast models, which have much better radiative transfer schemes that the relatively poor job done by these two authors (only 3 top-of-the-atmosphere ‘comparisons’ with observations in their papers compared to O(10^5-10^7) done at least twice a day in any analysis cycle of satellite radiances performed to provide the initial conditions to a weather forecast).
October 10, 2024
Weather forecasting models make next to no use of any derailed radiative transfer calculations. They use ToA measurements as input data to save them the need to attempt what would be impossible even with current weather computers.
I have yet to see any detailed critique of Wijngaarden and Happer that demonstrates any errors in their work. That might constitute a proper reason for not publishing it. I am fortunate enough to have a detailed understanding of what they have done, and it is clear that it is an improvement on similar earlier work, including the Manabe paper you cited earlier. They selected very different atmospheric conditions, and verified that their calculations provided a very good match with all of them. The match was with detailed spectra, not simple temperature measurements, which us what makes it impressive.
October 12, 2024
A weather forecast model will use Gbytes of radiances to provide temperature, humidity and ozone, … profiles for their initial conditions.
You should do a search along the line of ‘use of radiances in the analyses of the ECMWF model’ or better look at the Training Course ‘The assimilation of satellite radiance observations’ by T. McNally. It is a powerpoint document of 90 pages, but just look at p.10-14 to see how many satellite data are used in every analysis.
You are roughly 45 years late in your knowledge of the topics, as TOVS radiances started to be used in the 1980s to provide temperature profiles.
And to provide these T profiles the radiances measured in narrow wavelength channels around the 15 μm of CO2 (from about 13 to 15) had to be better calculated in the model than what W&H are able to do 40 years later.
October 13, 2024
W&H’s work is correct for what they show.
What they did not show, because it would ruin their whole story, is how the downward fluxes at the surface change. Even in clear atmospheres these would increase both because of the increase in CO2 but mainly because of the increase in humidity (Clausius-Clapeyron, 7% for 1K).
October 9, 2024
Adapting to change is life, in our so-called modern world that means having the wealth and money to do the adapting. The UK establishment, with draconian punitive Laws And Regulations seek to punish before they have a viable alternative. They remove the wealth(tax) creation before building the response, they are maliciously causing destruction out of spite. Above all successive Government have deliberately exasperated the situation in that everything they have done has been focused on exporting UK wealth and jobs, then increased World CO2 emissions by another magnitude.
October 9, 2024
IB :
The plan is to destroy the UK’s wealth because poverty itself brings massively reduced CO2 emissions. For instance, the reason they are totally unconcerned that the local electricity grids are incapable of providing the power necessary for all houses to be converted to heat pumps and for everyone to have an ev is because there is simply no intention for all properties to have heating or for all existing ice car owners to have an ev.
Hence all NESO Pathways require “customer engagement” and “behaviour change” to dramatically reduce energy consumption and to be able to match renewables chaotically intermittent supply.
October 9, 2024
“The five largest producers are China, USA, India, EU and Russia.” – Not one of them is seeking to punish directly or indirectly their People, Not one of them is seeking to export their peoples jobs. Not one of them is maliciously sending their Taxpayer money and wealth abroad.
They are all in receipt of UK taxpayer wealth. Massive amounts of UK taxpayer wealth, getting richer at the UK’s expense so the clueless UK Establishment and Political Class can sit back watch their destruction unfold and pat themselves on the back and embellish their person self-esteem.
October 9, 2024
Apparently we can *lead* the world on climate change.
Apparently we can’t *lead* the world on anything else because we left the EU and are irrelevant.
These climate/europhiles (they all are) really are something else. They just hate the British people, see Great Britain as a crime and this country as a crime scene. We must be punished and atone for our privileges. THAT is the real motive behind greenism.
The US, China and India will be ignoring our suicidal and pointless example.
October 9, 2024
7. Since ‘Climate Science’ is settled might I suggest all the ‘Climate Scientists’ be sacked as there is obviously no ongoing role for their ‘skills’
October 9, 2024
MG :
Very true. And since we’re told by the UN ec Gen that “we’ve arrived in the era of global boiling” we might as well forget the Net Zero requirement and make the most of what time we have left.
October 9, 2024
I like your thinking
October 12, 2024
No climate science has never been settled. If anything right now the atmospheric physicists, oceanographers, specialists of land processes and dynamicists are, I guess, very busy fighting the absurdities provided day in day out by the like of OR who is unable to see the contradictions between his advocacy of the findings of Wijngaarten & Happer and that of the ‘findings’ of Shula & Ott.
October 9, 2024
“CO2 is a greenhouse gas. As China and India generate much more of it and are increasing their output so that will add to warming……..”
So is water vapour a greenhouse gas, in fact the biggest, but so far the climate alarmists are not yet calling for the net zeroing of water vapour in the atmosphere….
The calculations by Happer & Wijngaarden using the IPCC’s radiative model and matching the observed data for IR leaving the planet from the upper atmosphere shows that doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere only increases the global temperature by 0.7 degrees C. The IPCC’s own estimate is a mere 1.2 degrees C (IPCC WG1 P95 footnote). This is because of a phenomenon known as saturation which is basically that there is already sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to cause 99% of all the warming possible as defined by the planet’s IR radiation curve and CO2’s IR absorption bands. So adding more CO2 can only cause a further 1% effect. The Royal Society admits to CO2 saturation.
The climate history over the last 500m years shows no correlation between temperature and CO2 except for the last 450,000 years when both CO2 and temperature have been exceptionally low and here it is found that CO2 follows temperature as shown by the Antarctic Vostok ice core data.
Finally, Shula and Ott have shown that the IPCC’s radiative model is invalid because it takes no account of the effect of the non-greenhouse gases which cause thermalisation, also known as quenching.
October 10, 2024
1/ There is no IPCC radiative model. There are a number of radiation transfer codes developed by various people used in the different models that report to IPCC.
2/ Tom Shula, Markus Ott: I am sorry to say the paper and the Powerpoint presentation simply show that the guys do not have the minimum knowledge of (or do not want to know) how weather forecast and climate models (WFaCMs) work.
They make a song and a dance about the Schwarzschild and Kirchhoff equations not being applicable to the radiative transfer in WFaCMs, as dry and moist convection are not properly handled. They are both right and wrong, right if one considers all these processes occurring at the same time, but they are completely wrong in the context of how a model works.
The model has a series of time-steps. For each time step, separate (and not time-dependent) calculations of short wave and long-wave radiation transfer, of turbulence (dry convection), of moist convection (and other horizontal transport) are performed. For radiation these calculations being (within that time step) time independent the Schwarzschild and Kirchhoff equations are valid and can be applied.
Then the changes in temperature (and humidity) are summed up (thus providing the total derivatives), multiplied by the length of the time step and applied to the various fields and therefore produce the fields at the start of the next time step. And the same calculations are produced again and again.
Please ORichard, how do you explain that pyrgeometers can measure infrared radiation at the surface, downward emitted from the various atmospheric gases in the atmosphere (the 340.3 W/m^2 in the first figure of the paper), upward emitted by the surface (398.2W/m^2) if as TS says only 0.4% of the energy comes from radiation?
How do you explain that various radiometers are used to measure the radiation emitted by clouds?
How do you explain even the spectral distribution of the outgoing long-wave radiation of the Wijngaarden and Happer’s paper if as TS says 50% is from non-radiation and is therefore non spectrally defined?
How do you explain the successful use of radiances measured by satellites to define the temperature profile in each of the grid boxes of present-day weather forecast models?
And where is the paper by Shula and Ott published? Apart from the Powerpoint presentation, I could only find their various YouTube presentations, which as I had indicated above are irrelevant.
If you really really want an interesting discussion of climate change, read Steve Koonin in the chapters 14 (‘Plans B’) and 15 (‘Easy on the energy transition’) of his book ‘Unsettled’. As it points out it is totally responsible to discuss the measures (mitigation vs. adaptation) in an effort to fight the worst consequences of a changing climate that he explains is happening (in his ch.2, 3 and 4).
Whether that should be left only to politicians or with the participation of the wider population is a problem that ‘Governments’ should handle.
However it is rather a rear guard (and frankly completely bonkers) fight to try to assume, as you do, that there is no human influence on the climate and that the measurements by the Pirani Gauge is a proof of it, especially in the way Shula and Ott present it.
October 9, 2024
Both the extremist sides of CO2 causes warming are ‘tradeoff deniers’ and there input should be treated as such. The IPCC science report clearly shows there is no catastrophic climate change: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app
The recent spike is temperature from 2021 was not predicted by the models so they are wrong but are they useful? We don’t know.
October 9, 2024
Some very good comments.
Regarding the predictions – Can anybody believe that they are not manipulated to match the rhetoric? Apart from that, as mentioned, important factors are deliberately excluded from the models, and there are other factors like radiation from long dead exploded stars that would be very hard to model.
Models have been wrong for decades, but still they are quoted with total certainty!
Are we put on this earth to be total effect of what happens or do we have the intelligence to adapt our environment — Well, the green zealots would go with the idea that we cannot improve our lot and should put up with it or die out.
The fact is though that Man has shown he can mould the environment to his needs. If it snows heavily we can build vast shelters. There are solutions to any kind of natural climate issue — ALL it takes is the willingness to innovate and actually manage the problem.
Current governments have given up trying to manage the supply of adequate resources and seek to punish us for their inability to manage the environment – but they aren’t even trying. They use alleged man made climate to bring in their own dystopian agenda.
October 9, 2024
I totally agree with every point you have made.
‘The Science’ isn’t Science at all, it is propaganda designed to fit an agenda. The same style of fantasy computer modelling is used to promote the fear of pandemics.
October 9, 2024
There is no CAGW. The satellite data shows warming to be a mere 0.14 degrees C per decade. The IPCC cannot find any signals for climate change (droughts, storms, precipitation etc) other than some mild warming leading to the loss of some ice and snow. See Table 12 in Chapter 12 of WG1 (“The Science”). This is clearly not a crisis. Only climate alarmists, such as the BBC, the real climate change deniers as they deny the existence of any climate change until the Industrial Revolution, can think that there should be never be any temperature change.
It is quite clearly a scam. Initiated by the Marxists to bankrupt the West and then taken up by the green energy grifters. When this is added to the fact that we have a high reliance on technology, combined with a PPE, law, languages (ancient and modern), history (ancient and modern) qualified ruling elite who have no science knowledge at all, then we have the recipe for a terrible national disaster.
Physicist Richard Lindzen :
“Historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the World – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.”
October 9, 2024
But we are all going to boiled to death within a few decades. Nobody will be surviving to wonder about the 20xx thinking. Greta told us,.
October 9, 2024
Bravo Sir John, an excellent summary. Our media generally and the BBC in particular have behaved so irresponsibly by brain washing a public who are either too busy or too lazy to make their own investigations. Why have politicians failed to undertake independent research? Why have they lazily relied on disinformation peddled by a thoroughly biased Climate Change Committee?
October 9, 2024
I agree with your very sensible article, with one exception. The word “deniers” is emotive and a wrong description
of people who have researched and know that CO2 is not a problem and that the climate has permanently changed and will continue to do so.
The problem is that decisions are now being made based on a false assumption and are damaging the UK.
Cheap, reliable energy is the basis of a thriving economy and the ability to make virgin steel a basic need for an independent country. Why are our Governments and MPs blind to the damage they are doing? What does it say about our education system that they accept a nonsense theory without research or questioning? Do they have no common sense or intelligence? I have asked climate zealots to give me one hard scientific fact that Global Warming/Climate Change is caused by human activity and I am still waiting for the answer. Ignorance is bliss but not when it is going to destroy our economy!
October 9, 2024
The term “climate change denier” is oxymoronic in that the people it refers to are the ones who say that climate has always changed.
October 9, 2024
I am not a climate ‘denier’, I have never ‘denied’ that the climate changes.
What I deny is the assertion that carbon dioxide from anthropogenic sources is the main driver of climate change.
It is not.
October 9, 2024
+1
October 9, 2024
I believe this is on topic: Armenia has recorded what looks like a nuclear bomb test in Iran.
If Islam has the nuclear bomb we need to stop playing games.
Their initial target is Israel of course, but what then …
We have published the evidence from Armenia. I can publish a link JR, if required.
October 10, 2024
Iran’s current target seems to be lining up support from among neighbour nations. Their Foreign Minister has had talks with Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi, and was going on to Qatar. Since MbS is by nature a hothead it is not an encouraging sign.
October 9, 2024
Melanie Phillips today ‘The Iran Delusion’ recorded with Johnson in 2014. Not many can stand by every word they uttered decades later. JR can of course. Johnson is shown to be the paperweight that we all now know him to be – of course he is of Islamic heritage. Fascinating – it includes:
‘Because Iran is currently run by people who believe, as a matter of religious belief, that if they bring about the apocalypse, if they bring about literally the end of the world, they will bring to earth the Shia messiah. That’s the people you’re dealing with.’
More incredulity and jeering (from the audience).
We need to stand by Israel unreservedly! No more tolerance of publicly demanded Jewish Genocide in London, indeed in Britain please. It MUST be a deportation offence.
October 9, 2024
The anti-Jew inhabitants of the countries surrounding Israel are learning that the horrific actions have ended up harming them more than the harm visited on Israel. Only mentally damaged leaders can imagine that some sort of salvation would come from using nuclear weapons.
October 9, 2024
Well said, Sir John, Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas but you need specialist knowledge to understand how it affects the temperature of the earth, particularly as its effect becomes saturated as its percentage in our atmosphere increases. The Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University, William Happer, may understand this better than Ed Miliband. Here is his lecture explaining the physics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5HYbAkVXuU
October 9, 2024
Everyone knows that our contribution to global warming is less than a negligible 1% and we have already reduced it by more than any other country.
The argument that idiots like Milband put forward, is that by showing an example, we will encourage the others.
That is naive and laughable. India and China are literally laughing at us ! And selling us lots of kit we don’t need.
My contenpt for them knows no bounds but their headlong rush to net zero is going to bankrupt our country and make life extremely unpleasant for everyone.
October 9, 2024
The Lords have –
Environment & climate change select committee
The Commons have –
Energy security & net-zero committee
Environment, food and rural affairs committee
Environmental audit committee
The Great British energy bill committee
The Great British energy bill programming sub committee
So why do we need an unelected quango – The Climate Change Committee
October 9, 2024
To tell the government what it wants to hear.
October 10, 2024
The Climate Change Committee is empowered to bark out the orders in its Carbon Budgets. The appointment of Emma Pinchbeck to be the Chair is likely to make it seem less relevant. She may get on with Ed Miliband (probably why she was chosen over Chris Skidmore who introduced net zero to Parliament and got to write an eponymous report on how to implement net zero that doesn’t seem to have been a real answer and defect to support Labour), but she lacks the political contacts and political experience of Lord Deben. She also lacks any scientific or engineering background that might help give credibility to the future outpourings of the CCC. THey will start to find they can’t buck reality.
October 9, 2024
I implore everyone to please read the governments ‘Air Pollution in the UK 2023 –
Compliance Assessment Summary’ pdf 32 pages, that indicates that our air pollution in all zones are within stated limited and OK
https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/library/annualreport/
October 9, 2024
Thanks glen
October 10, 2024
I’m a little surprised that Reading/Wokingham is featured. However, although the zone passes tests, I detect something foul about the air ever since the last election result.
October 10, 2024
That might be the plume of net-zero
October 9, 2024
Well said, it is a shame you didn’t bring these points up when you were in government.
Reply I did! I did not vote for the climate change legislation.
October 11, 2024
Climate (and weather) change is certain. Possible human control of it is ridiculous vanity. Trying to set a good example to the world and expect to be followed is mad. Scientists are paid to find that CO2 emissions cause climate and weather change – so, like with Covid, pluck figures to suit. But CO2 levels go up AFTER climate heating, therefore they can’t be the cause. The religion of climate emergency caused by CO2 needs to be challenged. Scientists who are not afraid for their jobs and incomes should be heard. We should have an expose of those who are benefiting financially from green policies, starting with those donating to and connected with the Labour Party, and then going beyond. See ‘Climate: The Movie’ on YouTube.